


some kind of pair

by detectivemills



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M, all of the angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-25
Updated: 2013-01-25
Packaged: 2017-11-26 20:02:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/detectivemills/pseuds/detectivemills
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Liam makes him wonder what his life would be like without him, if their paths had never crossed, and Zayn can’t say the same for anyone else. He thinks that feeling – the uniqueness, one-of-a-kindness of it – is something he’ll be having to deal with for a long, long time.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	some kind of pair

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the Richard Siken quote: _You're a fever I'm learning to live with, and everything is happening at the end of a very long tunnel._ Written for [olymfics](http://1d-olymfics.livejournal.com/) through October and November of last year, so pls adjust your internal timeline accordingly!
> 
> There's stuff about this I'd change after not looking at it for two months, but w/e. And, duh, standard disclaimer: not true, never true, etc., etc.

Being nineteen is about saving up money for the new iPad and having to pay your car insurance at the same time. Being nineteen is about worrying that you bombed your Astronomy exam and drinking shit red wine out of the bottle to make up for it; it's about being relieved when you get it back with a _26/30_ scrawled across the top and drinking shit red wine out of the bottle anyway. Being nineteen is about the quality of your phone's camera and the sticky floors at poorly-lit pubs and Sunday afternoon marathons of crime shows.

In Liam Payne's wildest dreams, being nineteen was never about being a platinum-selling, jet-setting, international pop star.

//

Being nineteen is about fucking up, fucking up again, and then fucking up a bit more. Being nineteen is about the thrill of the chase and the tub-thumping music of towering London clubs. Being nineteen is about the rush of adrenaline and awe that floods the mind when they step out on stage, lights haloing the crowd and burning their faces. Being nineteen is about pretending to have it all figured out.

In Zayn Malik's wildest dreams, being nineteen was never about being hopelessly, unequivocally, damningly in love with his best friend.

 

 

It happened once and it was pretty stupid.

Liam's jaw felt unhinged and he couldn't get enough of Zayn's mouth: the way his bottom lip fit in between Zayn’s without any effort, the way Zayn's tongue was warm all along his neck, his mouth, against his own. Liam couldn’t keep his hands from moving all over, up and around and back down Zayn's body. He could feel the adrenaline and the fear melting off Zayn, feel the tension draining from him, because the phrase _no one here is safe_ doesn’t really mean anything until you’re on the wrong end of it.

Liam worries about it, before and throughout and right after. Zayn’s hand is sticky against his hip and he was supposed to be Liam’s best friend. Does this change that? There was that and now there’s this; what now?

But it doesn’t seem like Zayn’s worrying about it, raising his eyebrows for a split second over morning coffee and immediately diving right back into their normal routine. He takes a bite out of the lighter side of Liam’s toast before they clear out and crawls into Liam’s lap in the backseat of the van.

Louis surveys the scene with mock pity. “Have you picked up another stray from the pound, Li?”

“Fuck off,” Zayn says without malice, and he pulls his feet up on the seat so Louis can’t sit next to them.

It leaves his mind for a while because there are more pressing issues – like what superpower he would like to have for a day and what celebrity he fancies most – but it seeps back into his consciousness when he least expects it. It bounces around in his head because Zayn touched him like it _mattered_ , and now every time he lays a hand on Liam it feels hotter and heavier and a fraction more deliberate.

Maybe what’s really scary is that he liked the way Zayn felt on him and under him and in him.

When he thinks too much... yeah, it does scare him a bit. But what about all this – this new extended family, this new fame, this new life – _doesn’t_ scare him?

//

The one time it happened, everything was in slow motion: Liam's hands up his shirt, pressing against his stomach all hot and needy. It was like they were back in middle school, getting the chance to feel each other up for the first time.

It was early on, too, and sometimes when Zayn thinks about them like that – Liam with his helmet hair and ill-fitting tee shirts – he smiles fondly, because things were simpler: a ton of singing, not a ton of dancing, the intermittent burst of camera flashes, and free food. It made sense.

But then there was this – Liam had let Zayn touch him, let Zayn lay him back and dig his hands into his hair and kiss him. No one would ever say Zayn’s name the way Liam did that night: like it hurt.

That was supposed to be it; it was all over. Zayn was coming to terms with that, because it’s not like they could live in the X-Factor house forever. Zayn was kind of tired of everyone anyway. He started thinking about going back to school – god, what would everyone say? But overall it felt less like the end of the world than he expected; he had lost more important things before.

He didn’t know he would be stuck with Liam for the rest of his life.

He found comfort in falling back into their normal routine, eating parts of Liam’s toast – the light side, the side he liked least – in the mornings and falling asleep across his lap in the back of the van whenever the distance between point A and point B stretched on for miles, traffic clogging up their trip. After a while, it felt like this was the natural progression of things: friends to best friends to more than best friends to together forever. This was his new normal.

And if he had known what was on the horizon for them, he’s pretty sure he would’ve done it anyway.

 

 

The conversation felt like it had been years, decades, lifetimes ago. That’s how long it felt like they’d been together; that’s how long they’d been doing this, whatever “this” was. It was still working itself out.

Harry had said, "'One Direction.' Wouldn't that sound good on the telly?" and Louis shouted, "Goddammit, Haz! That's it!" and Niall added, "That'll look good on shirts, too. Across all them girls' tits."

"Across all them girls' tits," Harry echoed. " _Yes_."

That was it – Louis banged an imaginary gavel and they were a band. But for a few terrifying days they were nothing, teetering dangerously on the edge of reality show exile, obscurity. They used up their fifteen minutes and it had felt more like fifteen seconds, fifteen bright, shiny, fluttery seconds.

And then they were signing a £2 million deal to record music. For a living. A £2 million deal to record music for a living. There's no going to uni after this.

Liam didn't know this was what he wanted, but it most definitely is.

Zayn can't remember the last time he dreamed about anything else, and now he has it all.

 

 

The hierarchy of people Liam Payne cares about starts with various combinations of everyone that orbits around him – his parents, his sisters, his bandmates, his girlfriend, his friends, the fans – and ends with himself. Sometimes he doesn’t know how to think only for himself, and now he has four people he constantly has to be keeping track of. Thinking of, and sometimes for. Protecting.

It all streams by so fast: shows, interviews, photo shoots, signings, recording. Rinse, repeat; rinse, repeat. More travel, more movement, less time to think. _Go with it_ , he tells himself. _Just_ go _with it_.

Liam finds himself doing the most talking. He says a lot of the same stuff over and over, but he's always been quite patient. Louis tries his hardest to crack Liam when he’s answering some of the serious questions and Liam finds himself laughing more often than not, working hard to explain to interviewers that they’re just normal lads, really, while Louis tries to pinch his nipples through his shirt.

“Normal. Really,” he repeats, and suddenly Niall’s laugh is ringing in his ears and he means it.

It’s Zayn who he worries about sometimes, absently; Zayn who works in phases like the moon, sticking his fingers up Liam’s nose one minute and mindlessly chain smoking the next. On bad days, Liam watches a half-crazy, glassy-eyed look take over Zayn’s face. It’s when he starts thinking too much, letting shit roll around in his head for too long, and Liam wants to pull him from the clutches of his own mind and tell him that there’s absolutely nothing worth thinking about that hard. _Just go with it._

One time Liam finds him with his head stuck out a hotel window, smoking cigarette after cigarette down to the filter. Liam presses up against his back, lets his arms twist around Zayn’s shoulders and hang in front of him, crossed wrists stuck out the window. He feels Zayn relax against him, and as Zayn snuffs out his last charred butt and comes back to earth, mumbling, “Dunno what I’m doing,” Liam knows he’s found something neither of them can afford to lose.

//

This isn't what Zayn thought it was going to be, this fame thing. It’s tiring and invasive and really fucking hard. And _god_ , if he gets one more question about being the mysterious, brooding one with an aversion to the spotlight, he'll start volunteering to do Twitcams or livetweeting the X-Factor. Anything to get a question about his hair or his socks or something equally fucking inane.

Harry nods sympathetically and Niall tells him to brush it off, but Liam has always known that Zayn just needs someone to sit next to him and make it feel lighter, less real, less _dire_. Less like the seconds are ticking down to the end of the world.

He has it all, people remind him – his mum, his dad, his friends from home. He has it all. _Take those questions with a grain of salt_ , his mother says. _Those people are just doing their jobs_.

A couple million grains of salt, Zayn thinks. He could salt every single sidewalk in London through an ice storm with the amount of salt he'd have.

It’s slow and it’s sure, but Liam sits next to him and teaches him how to take it all in stride. Harry smiles and Niall laughs and Louis shouts and Liam pulls it all together and Zayn can’t help but grin at the side of his face as he talks, as he packages words up tightly and ties a bow around them and turns it all into something that’s beautiful and melodic and right.

Liam reminds him to be himself, even when Zayn feels haunted and trapped and kind of offended by the persona the gossip rags and television personalities have created for him: the quiet one. The vain one. The one with no personality.

“We know you,” Liam tells him, hands on Zayn’s shoulders. His smile is soft. “Doesn’t matter what they say. We know the real you.”

Sometimes it’s really hard, but he has it all. _I have it all,_ he thinks. But then Liam squeezes his thigh – something about oranges – and he's reminded of the one thing he doesn't have.

 

 

Liam always thought knowing people so well would put him off. He thought that spending every goddamn day with these lads would reveal how awful teenage boys were, how messy and stupid and immature they were. Instead, he’s ended up with four people he knows as well as he knows himself. Four best friends.

Sometimes frustration boils over: when Niall takes food _right off his plate_ , or Harry takes a joke just a _bit_ too far, or Louis pulls his trousers down in public _again_. But it’s hard, especially when he feels so connected to these bizarre wankers. Looking back, he can barely separate how well he knows them from the parts of his life they weren’t involved in, when he didn’t know them at all. He knows Niall just has an absurdly fast metabolism, the lucky fucker; that Harry has never really been one for relationships with staunch boundaries, the weirdo; and that Louis just wants to make everyone laugh until they cry and then make them laugh some more, being the kind-hearted attention whore he is.

And then there’s Zayn, who isn’t one for theatrics and doesn’t waste a single word. He talks on a loop when he smokes, and Liam thinks it’s because he knows Liam doesn’t particularly want to be out there with him but goes anyway, bundling up against the cold or digging into his suitcase for a pair of sunglasses. The smoke drifts out of his mouth, chasing his words, and Liam watches as it disappears into thin air.

Zayn tells stories about his friends from home and Liam files it all away like he’ll be tested one day. How they used to cover for each other when they’d be sneaking around with girls; how Zayn was a great student, doing all his homework even though he pretended he didn’t, “to save face, you know?”; how he used to deal with the shit he got at school because of how he looked.

Liam hears the sting of it in his voice. He can feel the weight of the hurt Zayn still carries with him.

And he knows the way Zayn fought with his father when he was younger and stupider; he knows the way Zayn treated his first girlfriend and how much he liked her and how much he still likes her, but in a different way. He knows how much Zayn misses being able to step out for a cig without having a thousand pastel-colored iPhones thrust in his face.

They never talk about what happened that one time, but for Liam, it’s par for the course. Not many things are off limits, but that, implicitly, is one of them.

All the stupid, petty shit and the stuff left unsaid fades away when they’re onstage. Zayn will squeeze onto the couch next to Liam, croon right into his face until Liam can’t take it anymore, cracking a smile and grinning into his lap as the roar of the crowd peaks like a tidal wave. Liam knows just how Zayn’s mouth will be quirked when he looks back up, how pleased he’ll be in having made Liam blush.

The crowd settles and Louis takes over as the hype man, screaming and carrying on and generally being himself. Liam still can’t look up and Zayn hasn’t moved, pressed tightly between Liam’s thigh and the arm of the couch.

It’s not the weight of Zayn’s eyes on him that bothers Liam – it’s how hard he has to try to keep himself from staring back.

//

They like to pretend it doesn’t get monotonous, but the show is really just a series of bits interspersed with the same five film clips and the same three speeches Liam always gives: _massive thank yous to all and to all a goodnight_. The Twitter thing is always good fun, and even though the questions are “random,” sometimes they get asked to practice that part too.

“What if next time we rap,” Liam asks in rehearsal, “I start doing You-Know-Whats in Paris?”

“You are unbearably white,” Louis informs him.

“But Jay- _Z_ ,” Liam kind of whines, politely indignant.

“Very, very white,” Louis says.

“Since we’re at it, we should probably practice our leapfrogging...” Harry starts, and before anyone can duck he’s crawled onto Louis’s back, knocking him off his feet. Zayn just stares. He can feel Liam behind him before he even speaks, but then he’s tutting quietly, whispering, “Children.” When his breath hits the side of Zayn’s neck, he feels warm all over.

They go through all the regular ones: dancing in sync awkwardly, naming pets, harmonizing to Katy Perry. The impressions one is good fun too, but they do those all the time anyway. Zayn’s favorite is the one-word-to-describe-each-other bit, because that routine always ends up a bit different. Calling Harry “sexy” is good for getting a rise out of the crowd if that’s what they need, and Louis can be “fun” or “insane” or “spontaneous” depending on the day of the week because honestly, there’s no other way to describe the manic energy he wakes up with every single morning. Niall is “cute” or “carefree” or “Irish,” because... Niall is cute and carefree and Irish.

Zayn gets stuck with “sensitive” and “quiet” and “thoughtful” and whatever other single words “just this side of self-possessed while wary of getting lost in the expanse of his own mind” boils down to. He’s getting good at laughing it off.

The one time Liam calls him “surprising,” he wants to grab his face and kiss him square on the mouth. Which, to be fair, he’s had the urge to do quite often, but Zayn takes that recognition, the acknowledgment of _there’s something more_ , and tucks it away for a rainy day.

Liam is “sensible,” and once Zayn calls him “daddy,” which isn’t exactly a Freudian slip, but comes close. He thinks of the way Liam sometimes packs his suitcase for him when Zayn can’t be bothered to get out of bed early enough, scooping up everything from all corners of the room and tucking it neatly into his bag. He thinks of Liam answering questions over the shouts of the rest of them and signing autographs from stage and asking everyone, no matter who they are or when he’s meeting them, if they’re alright.

Liam always listens to him and never rolls his eyes when he doodles on someone’s arm in semi-permanent marker. He’s the only person that makes Zayn feel like he’s talking too much, because Liam just listens and nods dispenses bursts of advice like a wise, broken gumball machine.

When Zayn tells him just that – “You’re like a wise, broken gumball machine” – Liam laughs for the appropriate amount of time and says, “Zayn, man,” very fondly.

In a perfect world, he would be able to go out on stage and answer Twitter questions and dance like an idiot and call Liam so many things: dashing. Smart. Hopeful. Cuddly. Happy. Beautiful. Hilarious. Steady. And in a perfect world, he’d end that list with _his_.

 

 

When Niall corners him and asks, “Do you know what you’re doing?” half of Liam knows he’s just being a good friend. The other half of Liam kind of wants to give him a black eye.

“Shut up,” Liam tells him quickly. Then, “Sorry. No. I don’t know.” Niall squints at him, equal parts silly and suspicious. “Stop that. What are you on about?”

Niall doesn’t look like he’s going to let him off that easy, so Liam tries to avoid meeting his gaze. Niall smacks him under the chin to lift his face in a way that would be vaguely irritating if Liam didn’t know exactly what he was talking about, and why he should talk about it, and how transparent his _I’m-innocent-I-swear_ act is.

“I’m not trying to be in your business, mate,” Niall says quietly, and even though there’s no one around, Liam feels his face heat up. It’s embarrassment, and the cracking of his facade of repression, and the inability to lie to Niall’s face.

“I’m not,” he repeats, “but Zayn can’t figure you out, and if I have to keep listenin’ to him reading your texts all through the night and _sighing_ , I’m gonna puke. And I’ll make sure it’s all over the insides of your suitcase. ‘lright?”

Liam closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Even though Niall is trying to make this as light as possible, Liam knows what he has to tell him. He has to hear himself say it out loud. He needs to say it.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he says, “but I don’t want to hurt him.” It’s halfway to a confession, the most he’s ever said about the two of them. It makes his stomach hurt.

Niall lets out a small sigh. “I’ll be honest with ya: I don’t think you can avoid it, at this point.”

“I can’t, with him. With us -- there can’t be an ‘us,’ with all this.” Liam swings his hands around to encompass the entire world. “There just can’t.”

“I’m not trying to be in your business,” Niall says for the third time, “but that’s where I think you’re wrong.”

Liam thinks about it a lot after that. He thinks about it so much, he makes himself feel sick.

He wants Zayn. He’s always wanted Zayn, all of Zayn, for as long as he’s known him. And he has so much of him that it almost seems unfair to the rest of the world; he has Zayn as a bandmate, as a best friend, as a brother. But not many things are conducive to being in love with you bandmate or your best friend or your – figurative – brother, and being on the cover of half the magazines at your local Sainsbury’s is one of them.

It’s about being nervous and it isn’t about being nervous, and Liam’s not nervous because he doesn’t know what he wants; he’s nervous because he knows _exactly_ what he wants, and how badly he wants it, and how he can’t, _just can’t_ have it. He cannot allow himself to have it.

It’s nighttime and they’re queueing for food somewhere, a McDonald’s menu glowing red and yellow in front of his face with characters he doesn’t recognize. It’s just the two of them and Liam can’t even remember how they got here. He has to look at the money he’s holding to figure out what country they’re in.

Zayn silently stuffs ketchup packets into his pocket and Liam wants to take his hand and say, _Another time, yeah? Let’s do it all, everything, when this is all over. Another time._

But Zayn’s hand stays balled in a fist deep in the pocket of his trousers and Liam looks back up at the intimidatingly foreign menu, fingering his handful of coins and wondering what it all means.

//

Louis is a man of finesse in a way few expect. He’s out of his head, of course, but he takes on a comfortable sageness when he puts aside all the shit and gets down to business. It’s his genuine self; it makes him easy to trust.

“He’s trying,” Louis tells Zayn. Zayn didn’t ask to have this conversation; he doesn’t think he’s been giving off the impression that he wants to have it, either. He honestly thought he was keeping the whole thing under wraps quite well. Louis just handed him a cup of coffee and pulled him outside into a weird sort of alley, low brick walls coated in dead ivy and graffiti.

“Light up,” he told Zayn. “We’re _talking_.”

“You know Liam, he just -- he’s so practical, sometimes it comes off as thoughtlessness. He’s so practical, he doesn’t know what to do with what’s right in front of his pretty little face.” Louis sounds convincing, but Zayn doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything.

“Is it really that obvious?” he asks, still dancing around the heart of the subject.

Louis rolls his eyes exaggeratedly, pulling his lip up in his _I’m tired of your bullshit_ face. “It’s all there but the fucking, babe.”

Zayn lets a column of smoke drop from his mouth. “Well.”

“He’s not trying to hurt you, is the thing.” Louis voice is heavy with something between earnestness and hopeless pity. Zayn can’t look him in the eye. Zayn’s pretty sure he couldn’t look anyone in the eye right now; he’s never had anyone say any of these things – about him, about Liam, about him and Liam – out loud.

“He’s just thinking about what’s best for us. For all of us.”

“‘Us,’” Zayn repeats. There’s too many sets of ‘us’es in this band.

“For our careers, for the band, for all our sanity, for our everything.” Louis goes quiet, and after a minute Zayn has to look up.

“Liam loves you,” he says. “That’s not even a question.”

Zayn takes another drag and exhales on, “Fuck.” It sounds much more pathetic hanging in the open air. _Liam loves you_.

“He’s not trying to hurt you. That’s what I wanted you to know,” Louis finishes. “Okay?”

Zayn manages to nod at him. Louis claps him on the back and lets his eyes bore into the side of Zayn’s head for a long, silent minute. Then he heads back inside to let Zayn finish his cigarette.

Zayn stares at the colors and patterns on the wall in front from him, but doesn’t see any of it. He sees Liam holding down the ‘t’ button on his phone to add thirty extra letters to the word ‘excitement’ and he sees Liam sticking his head out of the bathroom, toothbrush crooked out the side of his mouth, to finishing telling Zayn a story as toothpaste drips down his chin.

Liam makes him wonder what his life would be like without him, if their paths had never crossed, and Zayn can’t say the same for anyone else. He thinks that feeling – the uniqueness, one-of-a-kindness of it – is something he’ll be having to deal with for a long, long time.

His flicks his cigarette butt at the wall across the alley. The colors of the writing are weather-faded, but under the mess of orange and blue and purple tags he sees tall white letters: _THIS TOO SHALL PASS_.

He says, “For fuck’s sake,” to no one in particular and goes back inside.

 

 

The one time it almost happens again, Liam forgets how to breathe and Zayn can’t see straight.

People assume they spend all their free time together, which is only mostly true. Harry and Louis do, but sometimes Liam and Zayn just don’t _feel_ like it; Liam has friends in London and the rock that is Danielle, and sometimes when she’s around, Zayn has Perrie. There’s a delicate balance that they’re all still learning to uphold.

But when they do it’s good, and they end up at Harry and Louis’s flat where there’s always a lot of alcohol and usually some weed. Liam abstains but always stays, comes to terms with the uncomfortable pull-out couch because Niall always calls dibs on the guest bed first and Liam’s usually able to stretch the kinks out of his back pretty quickly the next morning anyway.

Zayn’s only sleeping preference is, “Don’t fucking wake me up.”

Louis and Niall always want to play FIFA and Harry always wants to drink and on a good day, they let Zayn light up from the comfort of the couch, smoke curling from the ashtray on the coffee table they keep around mostly for him. Liam always looks a bit perturbed, but still lets his feet get all tangled with Zayn’s while he’s rolling a joint (because, as Liam insists, “Paul would smash you over the head with that bowl thing if he ever found it within ten miles of us, so _no_ ”).

Zayn pushes his smoke away from Liam, straight up into the air, and sometimes Liam can’t help but stare up the long, stubbled length of Zayn’s neck. Zayn lets Niall pull the joint right out of his mouth and the way his lips stick together for just a second makes Liam feel a little lightheaded.

Later in the night, it’s through the slow-motion fog of alcohol and drugs that Zayn’s hand finds Liam’s hip and when he rolls himself over, gets a leg between Liam’s own, all he does is _feel_ : the warm skin of Liam’s thighs and the cold press of his toes against Zayn’s ankle and the beautiful planes of his stomach.

It’s dark and painfully quiet and everyone else has made their escape, slipped away and called it a night. The flattened couch lurches under them and Zayn lays against him, stretching himself all across Liam’s body. Liam moves in slow motion and brings a hand up to rest high on Zayn’s neck. The pull of breath into his own lungs makes Zayn shake.

When Zayn levers up to kiss him, he gets Liam’s jaw.

“Zayn, ah -- ” and Liam’s voice is weak but compassionate and not at all nervous, because he is past being nervous about this, them. He is not nervous. He feels a thrumming in his stomach, like he’s going to throw up or spit out words without his brain’s permission. His hands lay on Zayn’s sides and he tells him, “Not now, not -- now.”

A lot of things happen in that moment. Zayn blinks and thinks he can see his own eyelashes flashing in his vision. He blinks and Liam’s stomach feels cold against his own. He blinks and Liam’s mouth moves, but no sound comes out. He blinks and Liam’s mouth moves, gaping like a puppet’s, and he’s sure that he’ll never be able to press his lips to Liam’s again.

It’s not _no_ and it’s not _never_ and it’s not _you need to go_ and it’s not _I hate you_ and it’s not _think of our girlfriends and our bandmates and our families and our friends and our image_.

Liam’s heart might burst through his chest, or melt into his blood, or disintegrate and slip down into his stomach like sand through an hourglass. A moment of physical heartbreak.

It’s _not now_.

Liam’s breathing is heavy all of a sudden, but he doesn’t think he’s nervous.

Zayn rolls back over and tries not to feel much for the rest of the night.

 

 

Liam didn’t even think he _knew_ how to fall in love.

//

Zayn never thought he’d fall in love like _this_.

 

 

Like most things that are glaringly obvious, Liam doesn’t see it coming. It’s a ton of bricks and a knife to the heart and the rug being pulled out from under him all at once. She calls and tells him that she’s in London and he’s surprised; “That’s great! But this isn’t one of your days off,” he tells her, and when she pauses for a long moment and says, too quietly, “I know,” panic begins to curl deep in his gut.

If he’s thankful for anything, it’s that she doesn’t do it over the phone. The rueful curl of her lips when she says, “I just can’t _do_ it,” is enough. More overwhelming than any one feeling is a distinct lack of feeling, and Liam absently understands that this is probably why people do drugs: so they don’t have to feel.

He doesn’t tell anyone, but it must be written all over his face because it only takes a passing glance from Louis and an, “Aw, Li, _no_ ,” before he’s crashing into a set of arms. When he looks up it’s Niall, face torn with enough devastation for the both of them – all five of them, maybe – and Liam just lets them pat him and hug him and cuddle him for a long while.

Louis manages to slow it all down for him, gripping his thigh companionably when Liam has to raise his hand in interviews for the inevitable _Who’s single?_ question. He gets texts from her from time to time, wishing him luck on something or sending a happy birthday to one of his family members. The whole magically regenerative kidney thing lets him soak his sorrows in alcohol a few times – just to try it out – and even though he shouldn’t, Zayn lets him curl around him some nights, drunk and stupid and very, very sad.

When they wake up, Zayn looks at him like he’s broken. Liam imagines that he can feel the pull of Zayn wrenching his eyes away.

He feels Zayn being dragged away from him by the weight of it all, repelled like the same ends of two magnets. Liam wants to tell him, _This changes everything and nothing and I still need you_ , but it ends up being just another thing he can’t figure out how to say.

//

It’s like that thing where traffic jams are born of thin air, when people slow down to look at car wrecks on the other side of the motorway: for a minute there’s shock and abject horror, but then it dissipates and clears and it’s smooth sailing again, flying down the open road.

It’s harder when your best friend and the person you’re in love with are one in the same, and that person is the wreck.

Liam pretends it’s okay, tries to smooth over the jagged edges of his life as convincingly as possible. He tries to pretend it’s more than okay and overcompensates in a way that makes Zayn cringe: he smiles a lot but it doesn’t reach his eyes, tottering around like a child, lost and untethered. Liam’s eyes droop and _he_ droops and it looks like the happiness has been sapped from his entire being. Zayn almost can’t bear to look at him.

And how much of Zayn’s life will revolve around his inability to look at Liam Payne?

Zayn tries to parse through his feelings a day or two later, separating _Liam is hurting_ from _Liam is single now_. He settles for telling Liam, “I’m sorry, mate. I love you.” The last part slips out but Zayn knows it’s true, knows nothing is truer, and Liam smiles his sad smile and says, “I love you too” without even the slightest pause.

He shows up the next day with less hair but more light in his eyes, and when he nuzzles into Zayn’s side early in the morning, even before the hot white bulbs of interview lighting switch on, Zayn knows things are going to get better for Liam and maybe, in turn, for him too.

 

 

People joke with Harry and Zayn about not having any bare skin left soon enough, but neither of them give a fuck. Liam envies that about them both, the fact that they can sit and watch a needle ink something onto their bodies and barely bat an eyelash, at the pain or what anyone else thinks or anything. It’s admirable. After a few weeks, he wants in on it.

He and Louis find a place and when Liam sits down in the chair, he feels a maniac grin spread across his face. Louis stares at him, eyes wide and his entire being eerily still. A speechless Louis is generally a disconcerting Louis, but Liam just kicks his leg up on the table and takes a deep breath.

Later, after his second one’s done, he pulls his arm in and twists it around to stare at the letters so often that his elbow starts to hurt. He likes it so much that he immediately goes back for a third.

The whole good-boy-corrupted-by-his-dashing-mischievous-friends thing feels old pretty quickly, but Liam can’t help but run with it. It’s new and kind of fun and anyway, he doesn’t know what else he’s supposed to be doing. The permanence of it all is liberating and fucking terrifying, but it’s exactly what he wants: never to forget, any of it all of it everything. When it comes down to it, he can’t think of a better way to ground himself and make it feel completely, wholly real.

Zayn’s eyes bug out when he sees the plastic on his arm but he grins when Liam holds it up to show him. “Look at you,” Zayn says in that liquid way of his, voice pitched up. Liam feels some sort of pride bloom up inside him because Zayn’s looking at him all fond and happy and that’s not new, but seeing it on his face always makes Liam’s stomach twist into a comfortable knot.

The next time, when Liam shows up with chunks of black striped across his forearm, Zayn just shrugs. “No imagination,” he says, because he’s _too cool_. Liam hipchecks him into the nearest wall and watches Zayn’s face as he tries to keep from smiling.

//

Zayn sees the glare on Liam’s arm where it’s wrapped in plastic and almost swallows his tongue.

It was something he saw as his and Harry’s thing for awhile – not that it was exclusively theirs, but the other three just didn’t show any interest. If he’s gonna think about it like that, it was rightly _his_ thing before anyone else’s. Luckily he’s always been good at sharing.

Liam confides in him regarding his sudden fascination with tattoos after he shows up with a few more. The arrows on his forearm are still healing when he tells Zayn, “You guys are gonna get me through all of this.”

Zayn’s heart starts to hurt in a very familiar way. “Same” is what he comes up with for a response.

It’s beautiful, seeing the comfort on Liam’s face and in his body and with himself, with all of this. Zayn sits close to him because he hopes some of it will rub off on him. He rubs at Liam’s head like it’ll bring him good luck – and also because it feels so nice, and also because it makes Liam lean into him – and Liam makes a weird enough noise that Harry asks, “Did you just _purr_?”

“Replay!” Louis shouts, and Liam, not one to give up on a game of Replay or be embarrassed by purring, starts humming like a pleased cat. Zayn smiles and scratches at his scalp again as some sort of reward. Or something.

 

 

It's Madrid, it's Paris, it's Rome; it's a city full of cobbled plazas with dirty fountains blubbering noisily in their middles. It’s weird both physically and mentally, because after everything they've been through and everything they've seen, every foreign metropolis that his parents have ever wanted to vacation to just ends up being another stamp in his passport.

The bar is small with dim lights that bounce off the mirrored walls and it's nothing like home – like England – with the beer pong table in the back and the neon colored straws and the lack of surfaces to put anything on. Liam looks around and there aren't even that many people in the place, but he doesn't see any of the others.

He doesn't need another drink but he _wants_ one, and he finds that his feet are taking him over to the bar on their own accord. Alcohol still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to him, but isn't this a lovely trick? Feet just doing what they’re supposed to, without even having to tell them? Interesting. Fun. _Wow_. And before he knows it, Zayn is there with an arm around his waist.

He asks Liam how he is in a way that reveals he knows _exactly_ how he is: pissed.

“Pissed,” Liam says anyway, because sometimes he likes to trick Zayn into thinking he’s a mind reader.

“Alright, well.” Zayn looks at him and tries to smile, but it locks his face up in something closer to a grimace. Liam feels like he’s looking in a mirror. But, like... minus the carelessly sexy scruff. And the blonde streak, obviously.

His inner monologue breaks and Zayn’s arm feels like a bar across his lower back. _He must actually think he’s smiling_ , Liam thinks wonderously. In reality, he looks quite miserable.

“Look happier, please,” he tells Zayn.

Zayn used to tense when Liam would do this – mold himself around Zayn’s body in a very public space, crushing him close – but now he just lets Liam fold around him, nudging his face into the crook of his neck.

“I’ll try,” Zayn says, and Liam thinks, _That’ll make two of us_.

//

Liam drinks and gets stupid and Zayn watches from afar as a glass slips from his fingers and thuds against the dirty floor. Liam looks down at the mess and back up to check if anyone saw. Zayn shakes his head.

Niall knocks into him and shouts, “Smoke?” but Zayn waves him off. He doesn’t particularly feel like moving. He’s content with letting things happen to him for the rest of the night, people and faces and music swirling around the room all messy and rhythmic.

Harry materializes with a girl _and_ Louis and stares Zayn down in a moment that is laden with so much bizarre, booze-induced sexual tension that Zayn almost rolls his eyes. But he lets them brush by him and head out the door, partially because he doesn’t want to know what they’re up to, but also because he can’t be bothered to follow.

It's only when Liam presses his face into Zayn’s shoulder, a mess of fluttery eyelashes and a warm nose and slick lips, saying something that sounds like, "S’time for home," that Zayn feels like it finally is time to go home.

 

 

The plane they’re on begins to rattle in the terrifyingly familiar way that makes Zayn wonder why he trusts air travel with his life on such a regular basis. He refuses to let himself close his eyes against the violent shaking and decides to strangle the life out of his iPad instead.

Liam slips his headphones off his ears and sits them around his neck, letting the rumble of the wheels against the tarmac loosen up his back. He likes to take moments like this to try to relax: there’s no questions for them to answer, no one to take their photo, no one to impress. Next to him, Zayn taps crazily at his iPad. Even though he’s not supposed to have it out. Or on.

“I do love you, you know," Liam says. He’s not sure where it comes from, but he’s not trying to be quiet about it; it's a declaration.

Zayn looks over. He’s glad he didn’t have his eyes closed, because opening them to see Liam looking at him so earnestly, with a gaze so hopeful and honest, might have killed him on the spot.

"Yeah,” Zayn tells him. He stares back at Liam, and the prickle he feels behind his eyes is either his irises turning into hearts or the gathering of a tear or two. He doesn’t want to know which.

And it feels selfish to just accept that from Liam – _I do love you, you know_ – but this is what they are to each other. He’s spent whole days and whole nights pulling it apart and piecing it back together again; it’s exhausting. Right now, this is what they are. This is it.

Zayn settles into his seat and says, “I know."

 _Another time_.

Liam nods. Through the rough roll of the jet engines, he feels calm.

Neither of them were fully awake this morning when they were getting briefed on the day’s travel plans, so they aren’t exactly sure where they’re headed – Zayn thinks it’s Norway, but what airport did they just leave from again? – but Liam checks his watch and figures that wherever it is, it probably won’t be too long til they’re there.

Zayn looks back down at his iPad. At this point, he’s prepared to be patient.


End file.
